Bilingual Utterances
By Tom Wachunas
“It's really absurd to make... a human
image, with paint, today, when you think about it... But then all of a sudden,
it was even more absurd not to do it.”
-Willem de Kooning
“I think there has to be an interesting
transformative process between your perception of reality and making the
paintings. If you are just trying to render what you see you are not entering
into a transformative process. And that's what makes a good painting: the
process of transforming and the willingness to leave reality behind.” -Susan Rothenberg
EXHIBIT: Paintings
and Drawings by John W. Carlson, Studio M exhibition at the Massillon Museum ON
VIEW THROUGH JUNE 25, 2017 / The Massillon Museum is located at 121 Lincoln Way
East (Ohio Route 172) in the heart of downtown Massillon. Free and convenient street parking is
available on adjacent streets. A visit
to the Massillon Museum is always free.
There’s a
dichotomous, sensate tension that saturates just about all of John W. Carlson’s
pieces here. It’s as persistent as the ripe, visceral oil paint that sits on
and within his canvas surfaces in much the same way some mysteries and riddles
can chronically tease or vex the mind. So
maybe the best introduction to his work would be for you to click on this link
and read his statement, which is a beautiful poem by Joe Psarto:
The aforementioned
tension comes initially in the way Carlson marries his representational figures,
or “characters,” to his abstract grounds. Stylistically, there’s no bravado of
illusionism or superficial preciousness in the way he draws the heavily
contoured people we see. They exist in dense, truncated spaces - ambiguous, nonobjective fields that seethe
with painterly activity. Ironically, in many of Carlson’s pieces, the almost
generic simplicity of figural rendering can push our attention to the intense gestural
energy of paint around them, giving the backgrounds a dramatic life and
personality all their own.
I keep coming back
to Carlson’s statement - the Psarto poem - and a few particularly resonant
lines: ‘battles and tranquilities,’ and
‘intervals of violence and peace, as in a
man’s history.’ History… though not
in any conventionally narrative sense.
The paintings aren’t
illustrations of stories as such, though you certainly wouldn’t be wrong to
think that they somehow hint at the aritst’s personal psychology, a narrative
of emotional states, or perhaps cathartic circumstances of his life. In
general, they exude a sense of arrested flux. While many specific visual clues
and cues appear to have been obliterated, some remnants seem to still lurk
under layers of thickly brushed, scuffled, and rubbed paint. Carlson may be at
once erasing memories and creating new ones, yet what consistently remains
after all his surface action - whether frantic and quick, or nervous and
tentative - is always a human figuration. If there are conflicts and tensions
to be remembered or resolved here as laid down by the artist’s hand, we the
viewers have just as much a hand in deciphering them. Fill in the dense
painterly blanks and blotches with your own history, because you’re already a
part of the implied drama simply by virtue of looking at them.
This art is a
compelling reminder that painting is a truly unique language comprised of many
dialects, many of which conceived to formulate what might otherwise be
impossible to manifest or communicate. Carlson speaks in tongues, as it were, and
his fluency is very well suited to explaining the inexplicable…if that be
possible.
PHOTOS, from top: Cinderella Sleeping It Off (2017) / Doubt (2014) / Visitation (2009) / Struggle (2009) / Car (2015) / From Here In (2016)
Hello Tom.
ReplyDeleteIt was wonderful to meet and talk with you last night at Massillon Museum for the opening. I greatly appreciated your kind and insightful comments about the work, but also the talk of art in general and how you have chosen for now, to use the written word to express yourself was fascinating. I would like very much to get together again soon for a coffee and continue this. Thank you again. If you would like to email me please do; carlsonstudio@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
John.